San Jose, Calif.Xilinx Inc. and ISR Technologies have developed an off-the-shelf prototyping-to-production kit that accelerates implementation of SDR (software-defined radio) modems for programs such as the U.S. Department of Defense Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Program.

The JTRS SDR kit consists of reconfigurable hardware and software elements that are compliant with JTRS-mandated specifications, including the Software Communications Architecture (SCA). The SDR kit supports partial reconfiguration and SCA-enabled SoCs. In the kit, partial reconfiguration is controlled by the SCA running on the embedded PowerPC 405 processor.

The kit leverages the DSP and partial reconfiguration capabilities of Virtex-4 FPGAs to provide a programmable product that meets JTRS requirements. In addition, the Virtex-4 FPGA-based kit is aimed at lowering overall power consumption and manufacturing cost through more efficient usage of processing resources.

"Lowering power and cost are two of the biggest technical issues facing developers of SDRs today. Xilinx and ISR have brought to market a complete prototyping-to-production kit that allows developers to address these issues with two novel technologies available in Xilinx Virtex-4 Platform FPGAs: partial reconfiguration and an embedded processor capable of running the complete JTRS operating environment," said Manuel Uhm, senior DSP marketing manager at Xilinx, in a statement. "We expect developers using this kit to realize significant time-to-market and cost savings in leveraging these technologies into a competitive advantage for their production radios."

The JTRS SDR kit is compliant with the SCA; the set of specifications that describe the interaction between different software and hardware components of a radio and provide software commands for their control. Adherence to the SCA ensures interoperability of products within the JTRS program. Xilinx and ISR closely collaborated with the Communications Research Centre (CRC), which has been intimately involved in driving the evolution and adoption of the SCA. The kit includes CRC's SCA Core Framework version 2.2, which is the current version mandated for JTRS.

The JTRS SDR Kit is priced at $75,000 USD and will be available in March 2006. The complete list of all hardware and software components is available at www.xilinx.com/dsp/defense.

The JTRS SDR Kit includes full documentation, including a QuickStart guide, and free on-site installation and training on SCA-controlled partial reconfiguration by ISR Technologies.